Westwego is a city in the U.S. state of Louisiana, located in Jefferson Parish. It is a suburban community of New Orleans in the Greater New Orleans metropolitan Place and lies along the west bank of the Mississippi River. The population of the city of Westwego was 8,568 at the 2020 United States census.

One checking account states that Westwego was as a result named because it was a major crossing point upon the Mississippi River during the great westward action of the late 19th century. When travelers were asked their destination, they would often reply “west we go”. Another more specific tale, recounted in John Churchill Chase’s Frenchmen, Desire, Good Children is that the say was the specific consequences of an 1871 meeting of a railroad board of directors in New York, where planning was undertaken to use the site as an eastern terminus (“…west we go from there”). There has been further speculation that this use of “Westwego” as a place broadcast may have been influenced by the board members’ familiarity like the read out of Oswego, New York.

The area of Westwego, Louisiana was inhabited by Native Americans for thousands of years previously Europeans fixed here. These original people created big shell middens that can nevertheless be seen in the vicinity today. The French first developed the Place in 1719 afterward French minister of declare Claude le Blanc started a plantation and a harbor along the Mississippi River.

The harbor became an important site in the records of the transatlantic slave trade. The home was well along owned by the Zeringue family, who turned it into bustling sugar plantation, known as Seven Oaks. Planter Camille Zeringue built a canal at the plantation that played a prominent role in the community’s chronicles for decades. Other antebellum plantations in the Place included the Whitehouse Plantation, Magnolia Lane, and the LaBranche Plantation in the course of others. After Camille Zeringue’s death, Seven Oaks was owned by Pablo Sala, who on bad terms the property along the canal into lots, which he sold for $40 each. Many of these lots were purchased by displaced hurricane victims from Cheniere Caminada whose homes were destroyed in the great unnamed 1893 storm. With the complement of these families, who were mostly fisherman and trappers, the community of Salaville was born.